The modern consumer is increasingly able to generate large amounts of digital content using commonly available devices such as cell phones, digital cameras, digital video recorders, etc. Nowadays a user can easily obtain digital pictures, videos and audio recordings of social and other events and have that data stored on a personal computer where it can be viewed, copied, edited, etc.
However, given the ease with which digital media can be acquired—and the many opportunities for doing so—it is no surprise that a user's hard disk(s) rapidly fill with media items that were acquired at important life events such as weddings, honeymoons, the birth of a child, birthdays, vacations, graduations, etc. In fact, much of a user's accumulated digital media revolves around such life milestones. For example, a person who is in his fifties might have acquired a fair number of photos and video in connection with his fortieth birthday. Of course, a decade ago digital cameras were not nearly as common as they are today. Although technology exists for converting older photographs and video into a digital format, most do not bother with the time and expense required to do that because the next step—editing the content into a coherent and pleasant viewing experience—requires a skill set that is beyond what the average consumer typically possesses.
The usual approach to editing digital content is generally different depending on the type of media. A number of digital video clips from an event (a clip being operationally defined as the video between a camera recording “start” and “stop”), might be organized and edited into a single video work. In the case of digital still images, a user might just create a hard copy (print) out of selected ones of the images or, in some cases, create a video slideshow using software that is designed for that purpose. In either case, however, the user will likely limit himself or herself to creating a video summary of a single life event, or two closely related events in time (e.g., wedding and honeymoon).
One reason for the “single event” approach to media editing is that the larger problem (i.e., creating a video work that spans several events that occurred over some period of time) is a difficult one and is made more so by the limitations of the tools that are used to prepare the video work. This is for many reasons, but among them are the difficulty in finding the various media items associated with multiple events, most of which will have the default name given to them by the recording device and will be stored in different folders and/or stored on different media. This process of finding, identifying, and integrating media items is time-consuming and puts the entire burden of this effort on the user, i.e., media editing software offers little help in this regard.
As a consequence, preparing a multimedia work that covers a number of different time-separated events from an individual's life is just not an option for most users because the required steps go much beyond the functionality typically provided by media editing software. Additionally, most media editing software is customized to operate with only one media format and, at most events, there will be some combination of still images, video, and even audio that might be useful in commemorating that event.
Thus what is needed is a method that eliminates the above mentioned problems, a method that features an approach that allows the user to quickly and easily create a unified multimedia work that covers multiple events and that uses varied types of media data as input.
Accordingly it should now be recognized, as was recognized by the present inventors, that there exists, and has existed for some time, a very real need for a system and method that would address and solve the above-described problems.
Before proceeding to a description of the present invention, however it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of the invention within the ambit of the appended claims.